Policing, on the Safe Side

The New York Police Department has been doing more with less for over a decade, with a force that is down about 6,000 uniformed officers from a peak of 40,710 in 2001. During that time crime in the city has fallen to record lows, and New Yorkers’ real worries about their safety have been replaced by more hypothetical jitters — can the trend possibly continue, and do we have enough officers to make sure it does?

Mayor Bill de Blasio says yes to both questions. The City Council says no. In its response to Mr. de Blasio’s budget, it is calling for adding 1,000 officers. This is a nice round number, smaller than the hiring surges — 1,600, 2,000, 3,800, 5,000 — sought by Mr. de Blasio’s Democratic rivals in the mayor’s race but exactly what was called for by Joe Lhota, the Republican who staked his campaign on scaring voters into believing the city was headed back to the bloodshed and muggings of the 1970s.

But a thousand officers is a thousand more than Mr. de Blasio says he needs. Police Commissioner William Bratton, who had said before his appointment that the force was too small, now agrees with his boss. He says the force is adequate and can be bolstered through the use of overtime, which he says allows more flexibility and speed in deploying officers than new hires would. Mr. de Blasio also makes the obvious point that the administration can’t afford a personnel spending spree when it’s pleading deficits in contract negotiations with city unions.

It is easy to think of ways to use a thousand more officers. The City Council argues that a de facto hiring freeze is a bad idea at a time when the mayor and Mr. Bratton are embarking on ambitious efforts to revive community policing and to drastically reduce traffic deaths and injuries, all while keeping crime low. And no one denies that the department’s community relations are problematic — as illustrated by a recent flood of unflattering photos on Twitter of officers being aggressive — or that improving its reputation while also cracking down in a big way on traffic violators will take lots of work by lots of cops.

But without an increase in crime, the burden is on the Council to show convincingly why and where 1,000 officers are needed. Mr. Bratton’s return to his old job promises a new chapter for the department, as it moves beyond an era of unconstitutional stop-and-frisk and surveillance abuses. He and his aides are still reviewing the department top to bottom, and expect to take another month or two to study what is working and what needs fixing. It’s certainly possible that Council members can show how and where the force is overstretched and understaffed. But until they can do the analysis and make a persuasive case, Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Bratton will have the better of the argument.